You Gotta Want It Enough

When Cassie first came home with us we had lots of toys waiting for her. Squeaky toys and soft toys and tug toys. But the one I was most looking forward to was the ball. I wanted a dog to play catch with and I was determined to start things off right with Cassie from the start. Dogs and balls, they go together, right?

I rolled the ball. She yawned. I tossed the ball up in the air expecting her to catch it. She let it hit her in the heard. I rolled the ball again. She laid down and went to sleep.

She had no idea what to do with the ball.

Over the past year she has learned to fetch a little bit, especially with the egg babies, but she is just as happy kicking it around on her own.
We’ve tried throwing things up in the air for her to catch and she just watches them come back down again, usually to bonk her on the head. I prepared to give up my dream of playing catch with her.

The other day my husband and I decided to play catch with one of Cassie’s egg babies. We tossed it back and forth over Cassie’s head a few times and then suddenly, she jumped up and snatched it out of the air. We were both so surprised, and happy, that we shouted “good girl” loud enough to scare her.

We tried it again, back and forth, back and forth, and then boom! She jumped up and grabbed the ball just before it reached my fingers.

Once we had something she wanted she “miraculously” learned how to catch. She was still the same dog as she was before she started catching the ball. I didn’t train her to do anything differently. She had to make the decision that she wanted the ball badly enough to jump in the air and catch it.

There are some people who want to write because they can’t NOT write. There are some people who want to “have written” more than they want to do the work.

How badly do you want to write? Do you want it enough to do the work? Because that’s what it takes.

I’d gotten away from the best reason in the last few months & am working to get back there–just the sheer happiness of putting words on the page. Yes, I want all the rest–the agent, the editor, the BOOK, but what’s the point of that if I’m not liking the work?